The Start
by the stargate time traveller
Summary: After the encounter at Farpoint, Jean-Luc ponders a little at the omen of their voyage as they are about to explore strange new worlds and to seek out new lifeforms and new civilisations.


I own nothing.

* * *

The Start.

Picard leaned forward, his new first officer next to him, but Picard's eyes were fixed solely on the screen as he took a moment to admire the stars currently on the screen.

They were all out there, just waiting for them to explore. "Let's see what's out there," he whispered awe already in his voice, the awe of being in command of one of the first batch of Galaxy-class starships after spending two decades on board, by comparison, a lowly Constellation-class ship where much of his command experience heralded from.

"Engage!" Picard ordered the helm officer.

After all this time, back after his court-martial for the loss of the Stargazer, he was in command of a ship again; the cruise to Farpoint had been nothing more than a second shakedown in his mind.

This…. this was true command.

Now he was back in the game.

It was all kicking off, as the expression went.

A moment later, the ship went from travelling at sub-light impulse speeds to faster than light warp speed in a flash of blue-white light. Picard let a small smile of awe spread across his features as he watched as the Enterprise broke through the warp barrier and jumped into the warp with the stars streaking across the screen as they travelled at warp.

Warp drive. The magical miracle that allowed space to be opened up whereas before if anyone from Earth had tried to get this far out, thousands of years would have passed. But with warp drive, it would only take a few months as the ship was passing through a bubble riding on the waves of space.

Picard knew it would take centuries before humanity was able to travel to other quadrants of the galaxy, and a few more centuries to reach the other galaxies. He wasn't worried. He knew that while humanity was going fast, as Q had said, it would take them a long time to reach that level. And who knows? One day in the near future, they could probably conquer transwarp technology, and go even faster.

But at the moment he was content to just sit and watch as the Enterprise's warp field took them well beyond charted space and nearer to the boundary of uncharted space. This was what he lived for.

How many times had he seen this vista before?

It never failed to amaze him with just how mind-bogglingly fast they were now travelling; four hundred years ago, the human race had been locked away on their one single planet and then Zefram Cochrane had opened the doors, not only to faster than light propulsion but also to usher in a new age where contact with other races became just another part of everyday life.

But Picard, who had once been in command of a ship which had always been on the verge of shaking itself to pieces no matter how much time and work had gone into trying to keep it together, was amazed by the _effortless _jump to warp that the Enterprise was capable of, whereas if he had tried to order the Stargazer to travel at the same velocities, well it would nearly cause a warp core breach.

Still, he had made contact with many races, explored new and distant worlds, and he was certain that the Enterprise, although he had no idea how long he would remain in command for, would visit many many more to add to the Federation's knowledge of the universe as they knew it.

And yet Picard couldn't keep his mind away from their recent adventure with the super-entity known as Q.

James T Kirk's own command as captain of the Enterprise eighty years before which was required reading at the Academy as well as one of the staples used to inspire people into joining Starfleet in the first place had described the encounters Kirk had had with super beings such as the Organians, who'd pressed both the Federation and the Klingon Empire into peace, but the entity Picard had met at Farpoint reminded him more of Trelane.

Both of them were both obnoxious entities, but that entity encountered by Kirk's Enterprise had been nothing more than a child according to Kirk's extensive report on the case, a spoilt child who required the use of technology to help him. Picard got the impression that Trelane and Q were both vastly different beings, but because no-one was truly sure about just how powerful the two separate entities were, it was difficult to classify them.

Still, as Ambassador Spock had expressed during that business on Organia, omnipotent beings were far above humans and other humanoid races as humans and humanoids were above single-celled organisms.

Picard decided that it didn't matter, although he did worry about when the next encounter with Q would be. For all the Enterprise's power and their experience, they had been hopeless against him more than once, and Picard truly hoped they never had to encounter the entity in that manner ever again, although it would be beyond their control.

The universe was a big place. He was looking forward to seeing what his tenure as the commander of this vessel would bring; it had already started out interestingly enough with the discovery of two lifeforms who were so different to what most people expected, but that was why they were out here, to learn.

"Just think, Number One," he suddenly said to Riker, turning his head slightly to regard the young, slightly boyish face of his new first officer whom he knew already thanks to Robert DeSoto was one of the best, and that Robert was actually privately pleased that he had a brain in his head, "we were about to walk out through the door into the galaxy, and we already had a visitor."

It seemed he couldn't keep Q out of his thoughts after all.

Riker nodded thoughtfully. "I wonder how we look to them, sir," he commented, "I mean if they're supposedly omnipotent, why are they so concerned about humanity? Surely there are other races like us, who had wars on their own worlds, had more or less the same upheavals but on different scales, but found peace exploring outer space?"

Picard nodded, pleased with Riker's reasoning. "Who knows?" he asked philosophically, although he doubted anyone would ever truly understand Q's motives, though he wondered as well if they would ever encounter another member of his race. "Still," he went on, "we've got an entire galaxy to explore, it's not like he'll be annoying us every step of the way."

He caught sight of the dubious expression on Riker's face, and he felt the same way.

Still, Picard felt good. He was in command of the most highly sought out starship currently in the Federation fleet roster after spending a considerable amount of time worried and afraid that he would never get back out into the galaxy. He and his crew had already encountered not one, but two extremely unusual but fascinating lifeforms, even though one of them was actually nice enough to not fire on the Enterprise and had actually thanked the crew for their help, while the other one had just simply put them on trial for humanity's mistakes of the past in the process of just growing up, frozen their ships' controls, and manipulated them like puppets for his own amusement.

Despite that, he had high hopes that by this time in a few years, he and his crew would have met more unknown civilisations living in the galaxy.


End file.
